Our service and costs

We are Independent Financial Advisers and we research the whole of the market before recommending products and product providers to you.

We analyse your current circumstances and work with you to understand your demands and needs. We will then advise you and recommend certain solutions.

We will not charge you anything until you have agreed how we are to be paid.

Paying by fee

Whether you buy a product or not, you will pay us a fee for our advice services. If we also receive commission from the provider when you buy a product, we will pass on the value of that commission to you in one or more ways. For example, we could reduce our fee; or reduce your product charges; or increase your investment amount; or refund the commission to you.

Paying by commission (or product charges)

If you buy a financial product, we will normally receive commission on the sale from the product provider. Although you pay nothing upfront, that does not mean our service is free. You still pay us indirectly through product charges. Product charges pay for the product provider’s own costs and any commission. These charges reduce the amount left for investment. If you buy direct, the product charges could be the same as when buying through an adviser, or they could be higher or lower. We will tell you how much the commission will be before you complete an investment, but you may ask for this information earlier.

Paying by a Combination of Commission and Fee

In some circumstances, we also charge a fee on top of any commission we might receive.

If you choose the fee option

We will agree the rate we will charge before beginning work. We will tell you if you have to pay VAT.

Our typical charges are:

The Investment Adviser rate is £150 per hour.

Pension Transfer instructions would be £200 rising to £250 per hour for specialist work involving Drawdown plans or transfers from Final Salary schemes.

In addition a fee of 1% of the value of any lump sum investments or pension transfers and 0.25% fee annually of the value of the fund to reflect the responsibility of monitoring investments.

Where work is required to be undertaken at short notice or take priority over other pipeline cases for whatever reason, a standard fee of £300 per hour is payable.

An additional £100 per hour for out of office or unsociable hours work.

You may ask us for an estimate of how much, in total, we might charge. You may also ask us not to exceed a given amount without checking with you first.

If you choose the combination of commission and fee option

We will charge you a combination of fees and commission. The actual amounts will depend on the service provided to you and will be agreed in advance.

If you choose the commission option

The level of commission varies depending on a number of factors and we will always inform you, at the time we recommend a particular product, what the commission payment would be.